The Hatterasman
Ли
absorbing and talc-full book
about flic islands off our coast.
By It KII\KI> WALSEIt
One of the Iasi places in North Caro¬
lina to become known to the tourist
and the motorist is I lattcras banks. Un¬
til a few years ago the famous Cape
Hattcras Lighthouse was a structure
seldom seen except by those aboard
ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Such is not the case now. A free
ferry at Oregon Inlet plops one’s car
on a paved road which ends fifty miles
down the beach at Hattcras village.
The road, never far from the surf,
passes alongside the communities of
Rodanthc. Avon. Buxton, and Frisco.
Those are names thought up by the
Post Office Department for Chicanti-
comico. Kinnakeet. Cape, and Trent.
The old names arc better.
A lot has happened on Hattcras
banks: much history, and many acts
of courage. Perhaps it would not all
have been recorded if we had had to
wait till some of those, native to the
banks, wrote it down. The history and
the folklore are a daily part of their
lives. On Hattcras, events which hap¬
pened a hundred years ago are merely
8EN DIXON MACNEILl
yesterday. The Hattcras people do not
need to have them in printed words.
Perhaps it would never have been
written down if an outsider had not
come to Hattcras and fallen in love
with it. just the way a man falls in love
with a woman. For Ben Dixon Mac-
Neill's The Hauerasnian (John Fries
Blair. Winston - Salem. 276 pages.
S5.00) is an act of love and devotion.
MacNcill. well - known newspaper¬
man. was a Hattcras visitor as a young
man. In 1947 he went back, settled
down, made friends, and listened to
the wind and the sea and the words
they spoke. The people there, never
garrulous to outsiders, soon accepted
this one who loved their island and
soon they began to tell him things.
The book reads as though MacNcill
were there beside you on the sofa,
explaining what the Hatterasman is
like. The Hatterasman is a composite,
a child of centuries, a man who does
not deny the sea.
Though MacNcill makes no claims
to being a historian, his method is
chronological. Did Amerigo Vespucci
come to Hattcras in 1497? Was there
in 1547 a battle there between ships
of England and Spain? The lore of the
island says Yes. Certain it is that Ra¬
leigh's sea captains in 1584 cited an
Indian village called Hattorask.
And how about the time in 1704
when Portsmouth Village was the most
populous town in North Carolina and
the largest seaport between Norfolk
and Charleston? And the time in 1737
when the "Prince of India" wrecked,
letting loose some two dozen horses
upon the sand — the ancestors of to¬
day’s banker ponies? Alexander
Hamilton passed there in 1773 and
later proposed the first lighthouse.
The Civil War came, and General
(Continued on page IS)
Quotes
THE H I \I>\S PEOPLE
Perhaps the Indian villages, for
a long time, were able to absorb
such as were cast upon their
shores, to welcome them in a
fashion that did not involve kill¬
ing. But in time, so busy were
the winds of history in the last
half of the sixteenth and the first
half of the seventeenth centuries
— from 1550 to 1650 — that
they came faster than the Indians
could absorb them and. little by
little, the Indian disappeared as
an Indian, and was himself ab¬
sorbed. Certain it is. at any rate,
that a good many of the older
families on these Islands, the Lord
Ocracoke among them, cheerfully
— they are never boastful or
rarely are — lay claim to being
part Indian. There are the peo¬
ple of the Island, but they do not
own it. The Island is the wind's
who built it. who broods above
it possessively, and who peopled
it. The people arc also the wind’s
people, and they live, by the
wind’s grace, upon the wind’s Is¬
land. — Pages 41-42.
BL ACK HEARD
There survives on these Islands,
and continues, a very lively be¬
lief that Captain Teach was a
right considerable fellow. No bet¬
ter than he needed to be. per¬
haps. and certainly no worse than
a lot of others who w'crc too
formidable to be bothered. . . .
And even if he resorted, on oc¬
casion. to what is nowadays con¬
sidered as piracy, at least his vic¬
tims had a fair chance, or some
change. . . . And what if he did
take time out now and then to
travel across the Sound and up
the river to Bath? It was no more
than proper for him, a ship’s cap¬
tain. to go and make his man¬
ners to the authorities there. And
did he not maintain a respectable
household there, with a wife? Did
he not also make gifts to the
church, and to the first library
ever to be established in what
would become North Carolina?
(Continued on page 18)
4
THE STATE. July 26, 195S
